Bad Magic | Language of Angels | S4-E3 AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Dr. Death

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Bad Magic | Language of Angels | S4-E3) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Go to PodExtra AI's podcast page (Dr. Death) to view the AI-processed content of all episodes of this podcast.

Dr. Death episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog

Episode: Bad Magic | Language of Angels | S4-E3

Author: Wondery
Duration: 00:28:02

Episode Shownotes

As Serhat builds a new life for himself in Los Angeles, he sees an opportunity for his biggest magic trick yet.Need more Dr. Death? With Wondery+, you can listen to all episodes, unlock exclusive content, get early access to upcoming episodes, and enjoy an always ad-free experience. Start your free

trial in the Wondery App or visit wondery.com/links/dr-death/ now.Support us by supporting our sponsors.BetterHelp: This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/DOCTOR and get on your way to being your best self.ADT: Go to ADT.com today or call 1-800-ADT-ASAP.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary

In this episode of 'Dr. Death', titled 'Bad Magic | Language of Angels', we explore Serhat Gumrukcu's fraudulent activities in Los Angeles. He initiated schemes involving the sale of a non-owned property and impersonation of medical professionals, raising grave concerns about trust within the healthcare industry. His questionable medical practices, including the use of unapproved substances on terminal patients, were steeped in deception. Eventually, Serhat faced serious legal ramifications as he was charged with multiple felonies, culminating in an FBI arrest, just as he was embarking on a new venture. The narrative accentuates the dangers of misplaced trust in healthcare and the superstitions surrounding success in medicine.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Bad Magic | Language of Angels | S4-E3) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:08 Speaker_03
Serhat's new neighbors in West Hollywood definitely had no idea he was wanted by the Turkish police. In 2014, Serhat bought a 1920s bungalow encircled by bushy green hedges.

00:00:23 Speaker_03
He moved into the three-bedroom house with his new American husband, Anderson. They paid $1.2 million for it. The following April, Serhat threw a party. He opened the house's sky-blue door and festooned the yard with lights.

00:00:43 Speaker_03
Among those invited was someone he'd just met from the neighborhood. This man, who asked not to be named, remembers being surprised by the invitation from his charming, super-fit neighbor.

00:00:56 Speaker_03
At the party, Serhat came over and suggested they pose for a photo together. Around the same time, Serhat reached out to a wealthy Turkish investor.

00:01:12 Speaker_03
According to Robert, the Hindenburg researcher, Serhat told this investor that he had an amazing real estate opportunity in LA.

00:01:20 Speaker_08
He said, give me $930,000. I'm going to buy this house and I'm going to flip it for you.

00:01:26 Speaker_03
It was the house of his guest from the party. Serhat had escrow papers, bills of sale, all in the name of the unsuspecting man he'd taken a photo with.

00:01:37 Speaker_08
The theory from the person I spoke with is that Serhat could get his fingerprints and could get pictures with this gentleman, and it would aid him in being able to steal his identity.

00:01:48 Speaker_03
The whole scam seems kind of preposterous, but it worked.

00:01:54 Speaker_08
He basically sold a house to an overseas investor that he didn't even own in the first place. So he just picked a random house on a street that he lived on, like two houses down from him.

00:02:07 Speaker_08
And he went to this overseas investor and he said, I'm gonna flip it for you.

00:02:11 Speaker_03
The Turkish man fell for it. He agreed to buy the house that wasn't even for sale.

00:02:17 Speaker_08
I don't know how this guy trusted him or why he trusted him, but he did and he wired the money to Serhat. Serhat didn't use that money to flip a house. He just started having parties.

00:02:33 Speaker_03
It was like Serhat had never heard that saying about not making a mess in your own backyard. And that was nothing compared to his other plans for America.

00:02:44 Speaker_06
It was Dr. Serhat coming over to the U.S. and going on a complete fraud spree.

00:02:51 Speaker_03
His ambitions seem to be growing bigger. The next target he set his sights on, the world of high finance and biotech.

00:03:06 Speaker_00
We're pleased to have ADT as our presenting sponsor. With nearly 150 years of experience, reliability, and safety innovations, ADT is the most trusted name in home security.

00:03:19 Speaker_00
And now, get the protection you expect from ADT with the intelligence of Google Nest. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. Go to ADT.com today or call 1-800-ADT-ASAP to learn more.

00:03:37 Speaker_03
From Wondery, I'm Laura Beale, and this is Dr. Death, Bad Magic. This is Episode 3, Language of Angels. As he built a new life in America, Serhat seemed to move into a world of high finance and science.

00:04:01 Speaker_03
Just as he'd done in Turkey, Serhat found it easy to impress people with money. But this time, he was trying on a new role, the investor. And he had a trick that showed potential investors he wasn't just any financier.

00:04:19 Speaker_03
At one such meeting, a former business associate said he held a table of dinner guests captivated. They were in a bistro in midtown Manhattan. Dishes clanged and waiters rushed by, but the guests' eyes were focused on a spoon lying on the table.

00:04:40 Speaker_03
The staff stopped and looked as it began to bend, twisting and contorting. Finally, it came to rest, mangled on the table. Serhat's guests looked at each other in amazement, trying to figure out how did he do that?

00:05:00 Speaker_03
But for his business partners, his tricks weren't all that made him a charming dining companion. Serhat let it be known that he was rich. He said his family owned an asphalt plant in Nigeria and a gold mine in Peru, and it got better.

00:05:16 Speaker_03
He said he was descended from Turkish aristocracy. The name on his checks even said, Prince Serhat D. Gumrukcu. Robert was trying to find a pattern.

00:05:30 Speaker_08
Part of what we do, or what I do, is I like to understand the mechanics of any fraud that these people have been involved with in the past.

00:05:38 Speaker_03
The sheer number and range of different frauds was a surprise. Time after time, the victim seemed to want to believe him, and especially when it came to the health of someone they loved.

00:05:58 Speaker_03
according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a family called the Paolovichs.

00:06:03 Speaker_08
In August of 2015, Serhat arrived in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania to do a medical evaluation on their son in preparation for treating his cancer.

00:06:14 Speaker_03
The court documents say that Serhat acted as a medical professional. He examined the family's adult son, Asa, and promised he would develop a treatment plan. The next day, Serhat returned with medication.

00:06:28 Speaker_03
With a needle in Asa's forearm, Serhat started an IV drip.

00:06:34 Speaker_08
And this is the really weird thing. His treatment plan includes, like, mistletoe, B-17, and natural killer cell injections.

00:06:46 Speaker_03
The same drugs that Serhat was accused of using on the Turkish patient.

00:06:51 Speaker_08
So this starts to reinforce a pattern.

00:06:54 Speaker_03
The so-called vitamin B17, known as laetrile, is banned in the U.S. and many other countries. The compound breaks down into cyanide and has been linked to poisoning in patients.

00:07:08 Speaker_08
He's asking for a lot of money. I mean, they're writing him, I think the first check is for $19,000. And then there's additional checks for tens of thousands of dollars.

00:07:18 Speaker_03
And not just for Asa.

00:07:20 Speaker_08
He must have really impressed the family because on his third or fourth visit to the house, he starts treating the mother too.

00:07:28 Speaker_03
He took a sample of her blood, which he said was for a stem cell shot. At the time, she was suffering from leg pain and vision problems. Over the next few days, he gave her between 150 and 200 injections in her feet, ankles, and legs.

00:07:46 Speaker_03
And according to the complaint, he treated her vision problems with another unconventional method, leeches. All of this wasn't cheap.

00:07:58 Speaker_08
They continue writing him checks, bigger and bigger checks. You know, they're paying his airfare. And what happens is he asks them to send between $200,000 and $250,000 for additional treatments that he's going to come administer.

00:08:15 Speaker_08
To just give you an idea of how big of a deal it probably was to come up with this sum of money, the family's home was worth about the same amount

00:08:29 Speaker_03
They sent the money for additional treatments. Asa passed away in December of 2015.

00:08:44 Speaker_08
And so the family reached out to Serhat, and they're like, hey, that $200,000, $250,000 we wired you for the next visit, can you send that money back? Because you never delivered those services.

00:08:59 Speaker_03
Serhat replied.

00:09:00 Speaker_08
He says, yep, I'm gonna send the money back. Just wait a little longer. It's on the way, it's coming.

00:09:07 Speaker_03
They waited and waited. Serhat didn't send it. To the Hindenburg team, the case was beginning to bring things into focus. What they'd previously found in Turkey wasn't just an isolated instance. It looked like a pattern.

00:09:30 Speaker_03
Serhat seemed to target terminally ill patients and offer them a dose of false hope at a steep price. By this time though, Serhat was moving into a completely different scheme. One that stood to make him even more money and put him at even more risk.

00:09:52 Speaker_03
It started with an email from a businessman named Gregory Gag. Serhat, I need your diplomatic skills. Gak has blue eyes, a cleft chin, and Minnesota charm. He'd heard that Serhat was a Turkish royal and approached him with a business opportunity.

00:10:13 Speaker_03
A trader in Vermont needed someone to front a large amount of cash for an oil deal. Gak was offering to act as the middleman, and he wanted to see if Serhat might be interested in investing.

00:10:25 Speaker_09
— Gumruchu, out of the blue, says that he's got $22.5 million standing by to finance this oil deal.

00:10:34 Speaker_03
— That's Thomas, from Hindenburg. The trader from Vermont's name was Greg Davis. Davis was a slim black man with rectangular glasses, a family guy.

00:10:48 Speaker_03
When Gack told him he'd come up with the money, Davis was excited, but asked for proof that the money was there.

00:10:56 Speaker_09
And so Serhat provides the other business partners, Gregory Gack and Greg Davis, with a letter from a bank in Cyprus.

00:11:06 Speaker_03
But Davis thought something was off. He looked up the bank's website and it seemed brand new. Not only that, some of the language on the page appeared to have been copied and pasted directly from Bank of America.

00:11:20 Speaker_09
Davis and Gack realized that the letter they'd been given is absolutely false. The bank didn't even exist.

00:11:26 Speaker_03
Serhat said he'd been acting in good faith. It was the so-called bank that was scamming him. But that wasn't the end of it.

00:11:35 Speaker_09
You know, normal people at that stage would just walk away from a deal. But not these guys.

00:11:42 Speaker_03
After all, there was a lot of money on the line.

00:11:47 Speaker_09
It's like, oh yeah, okay, we figured out that this bank's not real. Do you have the money? Can you come up with something else? And so that just starts a whole series of cons and frauds and lies.

00:12:00 Speaker_03
Serhat was running multiple scams at the same time. And for a while, it must have seemed like he was getting away with it. But then, at the start of 2017, his past began to catch up with him.

00:12:21 Speaker_03
On February 9th, a phalanx of FBI agents swarmed a quiet Los Angeles neighborhood. Agents converged on a white bungalow and rushed in. Serhat was out on the sidewalk, in handcuffs. He was being charged with 14 felony counts relating to fraud and theft.

00:12:44 Speaker_08
Obtaining money, labor, or property by false pretenses, grand theft of personal property. Identity theft.

00:12:53 Speaker_03
The charges touched on every aspect of Serhat's crime spree. Real estate fraud, bad checks, identity theft. The list is long and devastating.

00:13:05 Speaker_08
False personation.

00:13:07 Speaker_03
Each of these charges alone call for a possible sentence from 16 months up to three years. But even longer sentences were requested due to the amount of money involved. His bail was set at $625,000.

00:13:23 Speaker_08
— Aggravated white-collar crime.

00:13:25 Speaker_03
— The charges threatened to destroy everything Serhat had been building in America. And they landed just as he was on the cusp of pulling off his biggest magic trick yet. An idea he'd been working on with a wealthy businessman. An idea called Enochian.

00:13:57 Speaker_00
Thanks to ADT, our presenting sponsor. I enjoy true crime podcasts as much as the next person, but I think we've all experienced losing sleep when an episode hits just a little too close to home.

00:14:10 Speaker_00
With ADT, get 24-7 peace of mind knowing that your home is protected by the most trusted name in home security.

00:14:17 Speaker_00
With nearly 150 years of experience, reliability, and safety innovations, ADT is a tried-and-true smart home security system that over 6 million Americans trust.

00:14:28 Speaker_00
Equipped with the latest technology and the intelligence of Google, ADT provides comprehensive protection that you can manage from virtually anywhere.

00:14:37 Speaker_00
Whether you opt for professional installation by ADT Pros or easily set it up yourself, customize your smart security system to work for your home and your routine.

00:14:47 Speaker_00
With Nest cams and doorbells, set up intelligent alerts so you receive notifications on what matters most. Your camera can tell the difference between a person, package, vehicle, and animal, and will alert you when there's activity.

00:14:59 Speaker_00
When the most trusted name in home security adds the intelligence of Google, You've got a home with no worries. Go to ADT.com today or call 1-800-ADT-ASAP. Google, Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell are trademarks of Google LLC. ADT. Brilliantly safe.

00:15:19 Speaker_01
Dr. Death is sponsored by BetterHelp. A common misconception about relationships is that they have to be easy to be the right one. But sometimes the best relationships are when both people put in the work to make them great.

00:15:32 Speaker_01
Therapy can be a place to work through the challenges you face in all of your relationships, whether with friends, work, your significant other, or anyone. Therapy can be so helpful for teaching you how to set boundaries in all your relationships.

00:15:45 Speaker_01
Over time, it can empower you to be the best version of yourself. I'm so glad there are avenues for everyone to try therapy. It's not just for people who've experienced major trauma. So if you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

00:15:59 Speaker_01
It's entirely online, so it's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge.

00:16:10 Speaker_01
Become your own soulmate, whether you're looking for one or not. Visit betterhelp.com slash doctor today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com slash doctor. We get support from ZipRecruiter.

00:16:26 Speaker_01
Our friends at ZipRecruiter conducted a recent survey and found that the top hiring challenge employers face for 2024 is a lack of qualified candidates. But if you're an employer and need to hire, here's good news.

00:16:38 Speaker_01
ZipRecruiter has smart tools and features that help you find more qualified candidates fast. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash doctor.

00:16:48 Speaker_01
ZipRecruiter has powerful matching technology that shows you candidates whose skills and experience match your job listing as soon as you post it.

00:16:55 Speaker_01
And use ZipRecruiter's Invite to Apply feature to send top candidates a personalized invite to apply for your listing. And you know what's cool? ZipRecruiter learns from your preferences when you use their rating tool to rate your candidates.

00:17:08 Speaker_01
They'll send you more matches from new profiles as they're created on the site. So let ZipRecruiter help you conquer the biggest hiring challenge, finding qualified candidates.

00:17:18 Speaker_01
See why four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash doctor.

00:17:31 Speaker_01
Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash D-O-C-T-O-R. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.

00:17:45 Speaker_03
Eight years before he ever met Serhat, Rene Sendlev strode into an upscale restaurant in Copenhagen. He was there to celebrate the greatest success of his life. He'd begun his career as an apprentice in a small jewelry shop.

00:18:01 Speaker_03
Now, he had just helped sell the business he co-founded, Pandora, to a private equity firm. He was worth over half a billion dollars. One board member called for a toast.

00:18:17 Speaker_04
So he stands up and then he says, OK, it's incredible that we are standing here tonight.

00:18:25 Speaker_03
Journalist Ole Hall spoke to those who were there that night.

00:18:30 Speaker_04
Who would have thought that this company would actually be a success? We don't even know what we did. We just did it. And then it just happened that we got very successful. It's incredible.

00:18:43 Speaker_04
and people are clapping and laughing and they're just having a very nice evening. But René, he found that speech so incredibly insulting.

00:18:55 Speaker_03
For René, the success of his company was not a coincidence.

00:18:59 Speaker_04
It was the exact result of a strategy and a vision and a plan.

00:19:08 Speaker_03
To Rene, the thing that made Pandora such a big success was expanding into America. But his colleagues didn't give him the credit. Ole says that Rene was convinced that it was his plan that had made them all rich.

00:19:22 Speaker_03
And that lack of acknowledgment drove him crazy.

00:19:24 Speaker_04
I think he was just hungry. Hungry for more. He was convinced that he could build up something that was bigger than the company he had left.

00:19:40 Speaker_03
René found his next challenge inside of the Symbian Science Park, a low-slung modern building near the center of Copenhagen. The complex is packed with startups that work in software, gaming, and biotech. The company was called Dandrit.

00:20:00 Speaker_03
It was working on a groundbreaking new treatment, a vaccine for colon cancer. Even though his expertise was in the jewelry business, Rene was excited to invest in such a promising industry.

00:20:13 Speaker_03
By the spring of 2016, Rene was the second largest shareholder in the company, just in time for the stock to crash. Dandrit's researchers had failed to find the blockbuster they'd hoped for.

00:20:32 Speaker_03
By the end of the year, Rene's shares had lost around 70% of their value. If Rene's goal was to create something bigger and more successful than his first venture, the opposite was happening.

00:20:48 Speaker_03
Rene had an ailing pharmaceutical company that needed a lifeline. And that's when he met Serhat. They were introduced by a nutritionist who promotes a program called Sexy Juicing. And soon, Rene became Serhat's patient.

00:21:05 Speaker_09
Rene had got some skin growth, what he believed might be skin cancer. And so Serhat comes along and says, hey, I'll take a swab of that. I'll take a sample of it. I'll get it sent off to some people that I know, and we'll take it from there.

00:21:21 Speaker_09
We'll see what kind of treatment you need.

00:21:25 Speaker_03
When the results came back, Rene received some difficult news. He had cancer. But then Serhat took a look at it and, according to Nate, from Hindenburg.

00:21:38 Speaker_06
Serhat had actually treated it and removed a potential cancerous growth. And that after Serhat's procedure, this cancer hasn't relapsed ever since.

00:21:51 Speaker_03
Serhat had seemingly made his cancer disappear.

00:21:56 Speaker_06
And so we were wondering, like, well, that's interesting because he's not actually a doctor and he's not licensed to practice.

00:22:05 Speaker_03
Rene may have been a rich businessman, but when he met Serhat, he was in the same boat as the other patients in Turkey and Pennsylvania. Someone seeking help.

00:22:18 Speaker_03
Once he was better, he began to wonder if Serhat might not be able to solve his other problem, the company with the failed vaccine. Pretty soon, Serhat met the leaders of Dandrit, too.

00:22:32 Speaker_03
Serhat recalls that first meeting when he was on the Fancy Lab Coat Guild podcast.

00:22:38 Speaker_05
They're from Denmark. They flew to L.A. and we had these meetings and I looked into their technology and I said this is promising. It's a very old technology. It hasn't been. Science is advanced but their technology hasn't.

00:22:54 Speaker_03
Serhat offered his help.

00:22:56 Speaker_05
I told them that I can make their vaccine work better and it would take about three months.

00:23:01 Speaker_03
He was hired as a consultant, but Serhat said they got to be friends. And the more they worked together, the more Serhat shared his own ideas.

00:23:10 Speaker_05
They were like, what are you doing in your research? And I talked about the HIV research that we're doing.

00:23:17 Speaker_03
As Rene and his team worked with Serhat, an idea began to form.

00:23:22 Speaker_05
So they're like, why don't we merge our companies?

00:23:27 Speaker_03
Together with Dandrit, they would form a new firm, one that would be named after the mythical language spoken by angels, Enochian. Rene believed that he'd found the visionary he and his company needed.

00:23:48 Speaker_09
He wanted a guru. He wanted a confidant. He wanted a magician. He wanted this mystical figure that could solve all the problems. He felt that it got in Sirhan.

00:24:04 Speaker_03
In the summer of 2017, papers for the Enochian merger were getting finalized. If the deal went through, it would take Serhat to another level of prestige and wealth. But he was facing some serious threats.

00:24:19 Speaker_03
He was still facing the charges from his arrest a few months earlier. And as the clock ticked down to the merger, another problem became more and more urgent, his business dealings with Greg Davis.

00:24:35 Speaker_03
The messages from the middleman were getting more troubling.

00:24:39 Speaker_09
I'm getting nasty grams from Greg Davis. Anything I can tell him. Greg is going ballistic and I don't know if I can control him anymore. Our friend is all over me. Greg wants to see a path forward. I believe he's on the road to prosecution.

00:25:01 Speaker_03
By late December of 2017, Davis was asking for $980,000 to drop the matter. His message ended with a warning.

00:25:12 Speaker_03
If Serhat didn't fulfill his part of the deal, their relationship will end in a series of indictments clearly bearing civil and criminal repercussions. Davis made it clear, pay up, or he'd take Serhat to court. Now it was up to Serhat.

00:25:32 Speaker_03
They are in control of how it ends, but it is the end. Finally, on January 12, 2018, the merger was agreed to. Despite not being a doctor, despite his history of unscientific cures, Serhat had become a co-founder of Enochian Biosciences.

00:25:55 Speaker_03
Somehow, he would manage to make each and every threat disappear. The criminal charges, the millions in debt, all gone. and there would be no more threats from Greg Davis. Because six days before the merger went through, a man disguised as a U.S.

00:26:14 Speaker_03
marshal had shown up at his house in Vermont, driven him away in handcuffs, and shot him dead. From Wondery, this is episode three of five of Dr. Death, Bad Magic. I'm your host, Laura Beal. This series is written by Benjamin Gray.

00:26:44 Speaker_03
Producer is Nika Singh. Senior producer is Russell Finch. Story editor is Allison Weintraub. Senior editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Fact-checking by Jacqueline Colletti. Additional reporting by Gulsun Harman.

00:27:00 Speaker_03
Production assistance by Mariah Dennis and Emily Locke. Sound design and mixing by Aaron May. Senior managing producer is Lata Pandya. Coordinating producer is Heather Beloga. Produced by StoryForce. Music supervisor is Scott Velazquez for Freesound Sync.

00:27:21 Speaker_03
Special thanks to Ali Dashti and Guy Roepken of the Fancy Lab Coat Guild podcast, and to Nate Anderson and the staff at Hindenburg Research for use of their reporting. Executive producers are Bly Pagan-Faust and Corey Shepard Stern for StoryForce.

00:27:39 Speaker_03
Our executive producers are George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery.

00:28:02 Speaker_02
Hotshot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own.

00:28:18 Speaker_02
She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld and she's informing on them all.

00:28:23 Speaker_02
I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list.

00:28:37 Speaker_02
She was addicted to the game she had created.

00:28:40 Speaker_09
She just didn't know how to stop.

00:28:42 Speaker_02
Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondry Plus.

00:28:52 Speaker_02
Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now.